Discursive strategies of genre hybridisation in Gianrico Carofiglio's essays and novels: towards a consensual language of truth and justice

Di Ciolla, N (2017) Discursive strategies of genre hybridisation in Gianrico Carofiglio's essays and novels: towards a consensual language of truth and justice. Forum Italicum: a journal of Italian studies, 51 (1). pp. 45-60. ISSN 0014-5858

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Abstract

Justice is a recurrent theme in the writings of Gianrico Carofiglio, in particular the novels and the essays. In these works, great attention is paid to how justice is delivered through the Italian legal processes, how it is conceived by those who are entrusted with its administration, and how it is perceived by citizens. Through the analysis of a sample corpus, comprising two essays and two of the novels of the Guido Guerrieri cycle, this contribution examines a range of strategies used by the author to configure his vision of justice. A preliminary overview appears to suggest a pronounced difference between novels and essays with regard to the author’s own stance towards justice. Whilst the novels echo the nationally shared distrust for what is considered to be a system that is dysfunctional, and deserves to be critiqued and contested, the essays encourage readers to embrace a consensual, positive view of the principles of justice. The main contention in this contribution is that the apparently resigned portrayal of a flawed justice system found in the novels contains the same desire and points to the same social and ethical perspective as the essays. Through a reflection on the topoi that emerge in the texts, and through the analysis of their key themes and the observation of some of their linguistic features (including lexical frequency and distribution), this contribution brings to the fore the ideological, as well as stylistic coherence that exists between the two sets of texts.